I'm Still Here!!

Hello!! Long time no blog! ;) You may be wondering what happened to cause such a long hiatus from the blog (ahem...5 months..)... Black hole? Broken fingers? Abducted by aliens?? All good guesses, but no. My pitiful excuse is that I am a working mom of two and I am still trying to master the fine art of balance. I may have mentioned this before but I am an extreme a bit of a perfectionist and while I have thought about blogging many times over the past few months, I feel like I need to go back and post about everything I have missed and then I get overwhelmed and give up rather than just posting something current. Well today the kids are miraculously both napping at the same time so I am going to attempt a brief recap of the past few months with the sincere hope that I will begin posting regularly again once I am semi-caught up. So, here in picture and bullet form are the past few months:

September:

• Hailey started dance class at The Little Gym. She absolutely LOVES it and it is so much fun to watch her. She has always loved music and dancing around and she feels quite grown up now that she is 3 and gets to be in class by herself. They do tap and ballet and she is a total ham looking at herself in the mirror.

• Madelyn started sleeping from 8pm until usually around 4am, eating, and then back to sleep until 8am. This was absolutely amazing to me since Hailey was not a good sleeper until she was about 10 months old! Girlfriend must have known that 2 kids is much more exhausting than 1 and Momma needs her sleep!
• I took both girls to LA by myself when Madelyn was 8 weeks old to go to Alex's baby shower because I am crazy  Supermom. Amazingly they were both awesome in the car and I am really glad I got to celebrate with Alex.
• Madelyn is a super eater and is gaining weight like a champ! Look at this belly!

 

October:

• I was able to get my maternity leave extended so instead of returning to work on Oct 11th, I was able to stay home with Madelyn until Nov 9th. Being able to spend that bonding time with Madelyn was so priceless and I'm so lucky that I was able to do it. These big open mouthed smiles just melt my heart!

• Being off work meant I also got to attend Hailey's first preschool field trip! We went to the pumpkin patch and Hailey got to pick her own pumpkin. She had so much fun and so did I! I also got to go to her class Halloween party and see all of the adorable costumes worn by her classmates. The weekend before Halloween we went to the Halloween party at The Little Gym, went to a Halloween themed birthday party for Ryan's 1st birthday, and made Halloween goodies. Then on the actual day, we dressed up the girls for a little trick-or-treating in our neighborhood before going back to our house to pass out candy. I think Hailey enjoyed passing it out even more than she liked getting it. Every time the doorbell rang, she would yell, "CUSTOMERS!!" and sprint for the door. It was hilarious! Love these little cuties in their costumes!

 

November:

• I went back to work the second week of November. Even though it was hard to leave Madelyn after getting to spend so much time with her, she is at daycare with our beloved Debbie so I knew she was in good hands. Still, the first day is always hard and a tear or two may have been shed.
• I was off the week of Thanksgiving so I was able to go to Hailey's Thanksgiving party at preschool. Before the "feast", each kid took a turn saying what they were thankful for. I just about melted to the floor in a huge puddle of goo when it was Hailey's turn and she said, "I'm thankful for my sister because I love her." Man, do I love that kid! She is such an awesome big sister and she loves Madelyn sooooo much!

• We went to visit my family for Thanksgiving. It was challenging driving with Madelyn this time because she is on more of a nap schedule and doesn't really like being in the car. Thankfully we had a great time while we were there and I even got to take Madelyn to see Alex's new baby, Mikaela! It's amazing how fast you forget how tiny they are when they're newborn!

 

December:

• This December was absolutely the most fun ever because Hailey is old enough to understand about Christmas and we did so many fun things together!! This year we started the Elf on the Shelf tradition and I think maybe Bryan and I had even more fun with it than Hailey did! Our elf's name is Smiley and Hailey was THRILLED to see what kind of hijinks he had gotten up to during the night. We even made it into a local newspaper article about the Elf on the Shelf phenomenon! I tried to take a picture of all the places Smiley popped up this month and I'd love to turn it into a little book for Hailey. In addition to the elf antics, we had an advent calendar full of fun holiday activities to do together. We watched Christmas movies, read Christmas books, went to see the Christmas lights, baked cookies, and on and on. Did I mention Christmas is my favorite holiday??

• We had a fun Christmas here in town with Bryan's family and my mom, who came to stay with us for the holiday since my step dad is in Italy and my brother had to work :(. It was great having her here and she really enjoyed doing fun Christmas activities with the girls this year.

 

January:

• Madelyn is 6 months old now!! Holy cow does time fly! She is a really good baby and although she recently had a rough patch with sleeping, I think we are starting to get back on track. We started solid food last week and she is definitely a fan! So far she's eaten oatmeal, sweet potatoes, and pears and she loved them all! I can't believe how fast this little lady is growing and it all seems so much faster since Hailey is growing like a weed too! 

 

Whew!! I think that's about all caught up! I am really really going to try to blog more regularly because I so love being able to look back on the girls' lives as time is speeding by!